With the help of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary
Philip Hammond and their officials, American treasure hunting salvage
company, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. is poised to make commercial
profits from Admiral Sir John Balchen’s HMS Victory, the memorial and
grave to over a thousand Royal Navy sailors.

This special Heritage Daily investigation shows how a catalogue of
incompetence, misrepresentation, collusion and back channel deals with
Lord Lingfield, a leading Conservative Party supporter, mean our
historic shipwrecks are not safe in the hands of MOD Navy Command and
the DCMS.

On 4 October 1744 over a thousand Royal Navy personnel aboard HMS
Victory, the largest first rate ship of the line in the world and
Flagship of Admiral of the White Sir John Balchen, were fighting for
their lives in a vicious storm in the English Channel, west of the
Channel Islands. At some point, out of sight of land and the other ships
in Admiral Balchen’s Fleet, they lost their fight and their vessel
became the tomb of those who could not escape the sinking ship and the
memorial to those who were washed away into the darkness.

The fate of the vessel and her entire crew became one of the
mysteries of the sea. A mystery spiced by the rumour published in one
contemporary newspaper, the “Amsterdamsche Courant” of 18/19 November
1744, that “People have it that on board the Victory was a sum of
£400,000 that it had brought from Lisbon for our merchants.”

It was the story, built on that rumour, which sent Odyssey Marine
Exploration Inc. looking for HMS Victory and in May 2008 Odyssey found
her.

Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. is a NASDAQ quoted deep sea treasure
hunting company and mining company, based in Tampa, Florida. Using a
combination of sonar and ROV’s [Remotely Operated Vehicles] Odyssey maps
and identifies wrecks on the seabed in an attempt to locate the “High
Value Targets” identified by its in-house historians. In a TV interview
on Fox Business in March 2012 Odyssey Chief Operating Officer [COO] and
President, Mark Gordon, stated that for a shipwreck to be of interest
and qualify as a “High Value Target” it had to promise a return of at
least $50 million. Thus it was in the expectation of being able to
market the prospect of such a return to prospective investors, rather
than any intrinsic historic value, that Odyssey went looking for the
wreck of HMS Victory.

Odyssey was searching for British vessels in particular because,
while most national governments and heritage authorities refuse to work
with the company because the of the for-profit ethos Odyssey brings to
its version of maritime archaeology, Odyssey has nonetheless managed to
build up a particularly close relationship with the UK Ministry of
Defence. First with the Disposal Services Authority over the
controversial and currently indefinitely postponed, salvage of the
alleged wreck of HMS Sussex off southern Spain and latterly, after the
DSA was stripped of its role over historic wrecks after the Sussex
debacle, with Navy Command based in Portsmouth.

The relationship between the UK Government and Odyssey was further
strengthened by commercial salvage contracts won by Odyssey from the UK
Department for Transport, for the cargoes of silver bullion aboard the
SS Gairsoppa and SS Mantola, both victims of U-Boats, in the western
North Atlantic, the Mantola in 1917 and the Gairsoppa in 1941.

When Odyssey located the wreck of the Victory in the Spring of 2008
it attempted to implement its standard business plan and secure
commercial salvage rights as “salvor in possession” of the wreck. This
was legal nonsense as far as HMS Victory was concerned because she was a
naval vessel on military duty when she sank and thus in international
law she was protected from salvage by “sovereign immunity.”
Consequently the only rights Odyssey could claim were those granted by
the Government of the UK. Nonetheless, according to US court records
obtained by Heritage Daily, a piece of glass was removed from the wreck
and surrendered to the US Marshal to be placed under Admiralty Arrest in
the US District Court in Tampa on 8 June 2008. Technically this was an
illegal interference with a sovereign immune British warship.

This legal move also carries the implication that, had Odyssey not
reached a subsequent agreement with the UK Government, the company might
have gone ahead and lifted material anyway and relied on the Courts to
sort the issue out. This was the tactic adopted by Odyssey over the
illegal salvage of 17 tons of silver coins from the sovereign immune
Spanish Frigate, Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, sunk in international waters, off southern Portugal in 1804.

Be that as it may, having gone looking for the Victory and believing
they had found her, Odyssey immediately sought permission from the
Ministry of Defence to begin an excavation. What should have followed
was a detailed survey and monitoring of the wreck site over a period of
time while the UK Government, advised by English Heritage, independently
assessed how to deal with the sensitive and historically important
find. What actually followed is revealed in the Tampa Court papers.

In August 2008 Odyssey gained permission from the MOD to lift two
cannon for “identification purposes.” This was completely unnecessary
as the identification of the site was never in serious doubt. Odyssey’s
high resolution video showed bronze guns with 18th century
British Crown markings, including bronze 42 pounders which were not
carried aboard ships other than First Rate Ships of the Line and Victory
was the only vessel of that type missing in the English Channel.

However, from Odyssey’s point of view, any delay in its ability to
excavate the vessel, which it claimed might be carrying a substantial
cargo of gold and silver bullion and prize money, would impact on the
confidence of its investors.

For this activity, which was undertaken without the MOD taking any
independent archaeological advice from either the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport which leads on heritage matters, or the
government’s statutory advisor, English Heritage, the Tampa Court papers
reveal Odyssey reached an agreement for a standard commercial salvage
reward of 80% of the value of the items despite the fact that the cannon
were already the property of the UK Government!

The court papers also reveal that in September 2009 there was already
a timetable in place to reach a decision about the future management of
the Victory wreck site.

“It has also been agreed that Odyssey will be actively
involved in the on-going process of planning and consultations to
determine the ultimate disposition, management and protection of the
site which is scheduled to be concluded during the second quarter of
2010.“

This schedule can only have come from negotiations with the Ministry of Defence. Odyssey added…

“In the meantime, Odyssey will continue to provide
archaeological, conservation and technical services, as needed, to Her
Majesty’s Government.”

…in other words Odyssey was presenting itself in the
US Courts, not as a commercial salvage company, but as an “actively
involved” official archaeological service provider to the UK Government.

This is early evidence of Odyssey developing multiple narratives
about the Victory where the company appears to be what it feels its
audience wants it to be. As the story progressed Odyssey has attempted
to present HMS Victory as a site about to deliver a 50-80% after costs
return for the benefit of its investors, as a human interest led story
about maritime mystery and treasure for the wider media and as a
considered historical and archaeological research project for the
benefit of the UK authorities and heritage community.

The contradictions inherent in these multiple viewpoints could only
be kept apart if Odyssey’s extensive public relations operation was able
to keep the narrative moving forward and retain control of the
narrative strands. When the project stalled in the early months of 2012
and detailed information about the company and HMS Victory contract
began to be widely published the result was an administrative and public
relations train wreck.

The comment also offered an early glimpse of what would be another
important strand of Odyssey’s presentational strategy throughout the HMS
Victory controversy. That is to seek to present itself as working, not
on behalf of its investors, but on behalf of the British Government and
establishment.

Faced with this, Navy Command, which was responsible for
administering the ship as a sovereign immune naval vessel, should have
had two overriding responsibilities. First for the ship as a
historically important Royal Navy warship with sovereign immunity under
International Law preventing any unauthorised interference with her
remains and second and morally perhaps even more powerfully, for the
welfare of the remains of Victory’s crew.

This is because, even though a sunken warship is not legally a “war
grave” under International Law and in spite of the fact they died over
two hundred and sixty years ago, the crew of Victory should have been
treated in exactly the same way as any serving member of the British
Armed Forces who dies on active service today. That is with privacy,
respect and the protection of the government, facilitated by
organisations such as the Ministry of Defence Joint Casualty and
Compassionate Centre [JCCC] and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
[CWGC].

Heritage Daily must make it clear that there is no evidence that
Odyssey has behaved improperly towards any human remains found on the
HMS Victory wreck site.

However, the management arrangements which the Ministry of Defence,
Deputy Command Secretary (DCS) of Navy Command, the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport, Senior Conservative Peer Lord Lingfield and Mr
Greg Stemm, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Odyssey Marine
International Inc now combined to put in place for HMS Victory and the
way those arrangements were negotiated, goes to the heart of what
Heritage Daily believes may turn into one of the great heritage scandals
of recent times.

Everything which follows is supported by Documents and E-mails
released under the UK Freedom of Information Act, by other documents and
e-mails obtained by Heritage Daily and by material already in the
public domain including, US Court Papers, reports and press releases by
Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. and briefings by the Joint Nautical
Archaeology Policy Committee; an independent expert group specialising
in maritime archaeology policy and the development of internationally
recognised best practice for underwater heritage.

These sources can be used to tell a shabby story of incompetence in
failing to take even the most basic steps to conduct due diligence; of
the failure to follow the most basic elements of UK Government policy
over historic wrecks; of the failure to take independent advice and
worst of all, of privileged back channel communications involving a
Minister, a Peer of the Realm and improper collusion by Government
Officials; all of which have served the interests of a foreign owned
commercial salvage company, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.